Why Johnnie Can’ Think – Pt. 3
Let’s cut to the chase … the third reason Johnnie can’t think is (drumroll, please) … too much screen time! Is anyone surprised? And the real kicker is that it’s not because of too much screen time at home, but at school!
Cognitive neuro-scientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath (a former schoolteacher himself) recently informed a Washington D.C. Congressional Committee that our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age.
In fact, he said, “Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have, from basic attention to memory to literacy to numeracy to executive functioning to even general IQ, even though they go to more school than we did.”
This is especially troubling when one realizes, as Dr. Horvath explains, that every previous generation (since the late 19th Century) has outperformed their parents. We’ve been standardizing and measuring cognitive development for over 100 years, and Generation Z is now the first one that hasn’t surpassed the previous generation.
He says to understand why that is, one need only look at what unfolded around 2010 that disconnected the K-12 schooling process from cognitive development. While several factors were investigated, the final answer came down to the tools our public schools have been using, i.e., computer technology. In short, too much screen time is making our kids dumber.
This has been no superficial assessment or reactionary conclusion. Horvath explains that across 80 countries, the data shows that once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance drops precipitously. So significant is the decline, in fact, that youngsters who use computers in school approximately 5 hours per day will score over two-thirds of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school. That’s across 80 countries.
If we look at just the United States, we find the same thing. The highly respected NAEP (National Assessment for Educational Progress) testing, called the Nation’s Report Card, provides state and national data on how our kids are doing academically. Take any state’s NAEP scores, compare that to when that state adopted computer technology widely, and watch what happens: the NAEP results will plateau and then start to drop.
Moreover, academic research that goes back to 1962 shows similar dynamics: when tech enters education, learning goes down. And why is that? The main (highly obvious) reason, known intuitively by any common sense American citizen, has been fully verified by the science of learning.
From their past two decades of work, cognitive psychologists now know definitively why computer technology severely hampers the learning process. Are you ready for this? The reason is because (drumroll again) … human beings learn best from other human beings. How radical is that?!
So what should our schools do? Well, most will do one of two things in response.
More on that next time …
Brian Schroeder is the former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, an ordained minister and founder/president of The ChrisCorps Commission (bschroeder081858@gmail.com)